Virginia Tech, in our prayers.

By now I'm sure everyone has heard of the massacre at Virginia Tech. Also being part of a large college campus, RIT students feel some of the impact and shock the VT students must be going though. What happened was unimaginable and our heartfelt sorrows go out to the students, friends and families. The President stated that "Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community.” Today there was a small prayer service in our Center for Religious Life around noon and bells chimed for each life lost. Tonight, the Residence Hall Association is having a vigil as well.

I talked to my father today as he is a professor at another university back home in Pennsylvania. He had one of the students who was in the classrooms in the VT Engineering building in one of his classes - as this student was an Undergraduate Environmental Engineering student at my father's university. This particular student went on to pursue his graduate degree at VT. He was one of only two survivors in this classroom and he managed to survive by "playing dead." Can you imagine? I can only hope that this is the last time such an event ever happens in the United States, or anywhere for that matter.